Archive of entries posted on July 2017

A Timeline of IMAO’s 15 Years

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Can you believe it? It was fifteen years ago this week that the blog Harvey & Friends (also known as IMAO) was started. I thought it would be neat to look at a timeline of all the important events in IMAO history.

A TIMELINE OF IMAO

2002 – Noticing a dearth of political opinions online, Frank J. started a blog on blogspot and named it IMAO for reasons long forgotten. Frank J. soon posted the treatise “Nuke the Moon” which many say led directly to the Iraq war, causing him to be considered a war criminal in many circles.

2003 – Frank J. wins the Pulitzer for his expose on blogger Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, explaining why local dogs had gone missing.

2004 – IMAO jumps the shark with its coverage of the 2004 race of W versus some random New England elitist everyone has already forgotten. Frank J. held a t-shirt babe contest in a surprisingly effective ploy to get a date.

2005 – Frank J. gets married and immediately stops being funny. He tried to compensate by turning IMAO into a group blog, though it’s really just Frank J. posting under a bunch of really fake sounding names like “spacemonkey” or “Harvey.”

2006 to 2015 – It gets to be kind of a blur at this point. I remember something about Fred Thompson. Ask Harvey.

2016 – Donald Trump seizes the Republican nomination and renders political satire redundant.

2017 – This post.

Well, that’s it. Quite a history. And who knows what will happen in the next fifteen years? Probably the complete collapse of this country and the outlawing of free speech — but they’ll forget to outlaw blogs since that was like this fad from years ago that everyone had forgotten about. Then IMAO will be leading the resistance — as long as there is still some money to be made from GoogleAds.

Thanks for fifteen years, everybody!

Sunday Night Open Thread

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Well, I need to turn in my crystal ball. I wrote yesterday that I didn’t do anything all day. But, I wrote that in the morning, just in case I got busy.

I got busy.

I’m babysitting my youngest grandson this weekend. And, with my daughter and my second-youngest grandson down from New York, it turned into a busy day. When those two get together…

And it won’t be stopping until supper.

Wait. It’s nighttime, right? I mean, it didn’t stop until supper.

Darn it, now you know that, again, I wrote this post ahead of time, too. So, I don’t really know how busy Sunday was. But, I feel confident that I’m exhausted.

Now, here’s where you’re expecting me to say it’s Sunday Night Open Thread. But, with the 15th blogiversary of IMAO, we’re sending you to Frank J.’s earlier Open Thread post, where he asks “what do you fondly remember about IMAO?”

Happy 1111th anniversary IMAO!

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It doesn’t seem like it, but IMAO is 15 years old today. At this moment, in fact. Yes, at 4:42 PM on 9 July 2002, Frank J. put up the first post at http://imao.blogspot.com/

We haven’t always made a big deal about anniversaries … um, blogiversaries. Mostly because we forget things. You know that movie Finding Dory? Based on us. Not the finding part, but the can’t remember anything part.

Anyway, we’ve made anniversary posts — or is it blogiversary posts? — posts in the past, at the one, two, three, four, five, seven, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve year marks.

Yeah, I noticed that around the time I wandered in and SpaceMonkey asked Frank J. “Can we keep him?” that the blogiversary posts started to taper off. But, 15 is a big deal. My first marriage didn’t last 15 years, so there. And, we are kinda making a big deal about it. Well, not really. It’s just that someone remembered ahead of time. Probably Harvey, or one of the adults.

How big of a deal? We got Frank J. to agree to jump out of cake for the official blogiversary celebration. Can you imagine that?

Uh, maybe we ought to go some other route. Yeah, we’ll not do that Frank J. in the cake thing.

Instead, let’s look back at the very first post at IMAO, back when the blog was on Blogspot. How many of you remember that?!

New Blog

Hooray! A new blog! There’s lots of stuff I felt like spouting off about, so here I am. Just as a warning, everything written here is in the most unrefined form and should not be used as an actual opinion.

POSTED BY FRANK AT 4:42 PM

Huh. That’s the first post? That’s, um … historical? Yeah, we’ll go with that.

Maybe the second post?

Peace or Pothole

First off, I don’t like the way the current administration is pussyfooting in the Middle East. If Reagan were still around, right now there would either be peace in the Middle East or it would be one giant smoldering pothole. And then it would be done with. Instead we play buddy-buddy with a bunch of dictators who, in a true and just world, should be hanging from trees. At least, it seems, Bush has completely cut off all ties with Arafat. I think we could have cut off ties with him a lot more forcefully, though. Instead of Bush coming out and saying, “You should elect someone other than Arafat because we don’t like him,” just so the Palestinians could defy us, we should first have had a sniper take him out and then say, “I think you should elect someone other than Arafat because he’s dead now.” Then the Palestinians would have to concede to our simple logic or elect a dead man. They’d probably elect a dead man, but sometimes people surprise you.

POSTED BY FRANK AT 5:22 PM

Okay, that’s more like it. Oh, and don’t forget the original tagline at the top of the blog:

I believe that the important issues that affect us our too complex to be fully grasped by the intellect alone and that by thinking them out too much leads to the worst answers. That’s how crap like communism came about. That’s why I’m dedicated to responding to political issues with my gut response and as little extra thought as possible.

Of course, it was later shortened to “Unfair. Unbalanced. Unmedicated.”

Well, that’s a brief look back at the beginning of IMAO, 15 years ago today.

So, what’s the future have in store for us? I dunno. Probably good stuff. I mean, you guys went and elected Donald Trump, which is comedy gold. So, yeah, probably good stuff.

I have no doubt that IMAO will easily make it to year 20. Or, 15 years and a day, at least. I’m optimistic that way.

Favorite Posts/Moments Open Thread

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I’d love if you’d post some of your favorite posts or moments from IMAO from the last 15 years in the comments. I’d put up some of my own, but I’m afraid it would be like the Simpsons where every one would be from the first few seasons.

Anyway, what do you fondly remember about IMAO? I did love doing the podcasts with SarahK, Harvey, Spacemonkey, and Lair, but man were they a lot of work.